Layonu And Others V The State (1967)

LawGlobal-Hub Lead Judgment Report

BRETT,J.S.C.

The four appellants and five other men were charged with murdering Muraina Adegoke at Ede on the 17th January, 1966. The other five were acquitted and the four appellants were convicted of murder, and have appealed against their convictions.

Sixteen witnesses in all were called for the prosecution. Of the five who gave evidence of the circumstances of the killing, and of who took part in it, one was rightly treated as an accomplice by the trial judge and two were thoroughly discredited, so that the judge placed no reliance on their evidence. The case depends on the evidence of two women, Nusiratu Adegoke, the widow of Muraina, and Selia Alate, his mother. They described how in the evening of the 17th January they and Muraina were in their house chatting when a hostile crowd pushed into the house threatened

Muraina and attacked him with sticks, stones and other objects and finally killed him by blows on the head. The post- mortem showed the cause of death to be a fracture of the skull, compatible with the application of a blow from a blunt object.

Each of these two witnesses Identified the four appellants as having taken part in the Incident, with Lasisi Omulyadun and Lasisi Ayanloye taking a leading part and striking Muraina on the head themselves with a stone and a pot. Each of them also said or implied that the murder had a political motive. Nusiratu said that the crowd accused Muraina of importing U.P.G.A. thugs into Ede, and both women said that the attackers were members of the N.N.D.P. We do not accept the sub-mission that the trial judge made wrong assessment of the credibility of the wit-nesses by overlooking the political background.

It may be true that some of the witnesses who were discredited took the opportunity of trying to cause trouble for their political opponents, but that does not of itself discredit the evidence of the two women and as the record stands we cannot say that the trial judge, who had seen and heard them in the witness-box, was not justified In accepting their account of what took place, including their identification of the appellants.

The appellants submit, however, that they were improperly deprived of the opportunity, of testing the story told by the two women against the statements they had previously made to the police. Before the case for the prosecution was opened, defending counsel applied for statements made by persons Interviewed by the authorities in connection with the case.

He was not entitled to see statements made by persons who were not to be called as witnesses for the prosecution, and prosecuting counsel, after referring to R. v. Bryant and Dixon 31 Cr. App. R. 146, said that he was willing to supply statements made by witnesses called by the prosecution when the time for cross-examining them came. He might well have agreed to provide those statements at once, but otherwise we cannot criticise his attitude. The Judge, unfortunately, took a stricter attitude. He quoted a passage from the head note to R. v. Clarke 22 Cr. App. R. 58, which reads:-

“A defendant is entitled to see a written description of himself given by a police officer to his superior, with a view to cross-examining that officer on alleged discrepancies between the contents of that document and his sworn testimony.”

He went on to say:-

“So the governing principle is that the defence must allege a discrepancy between the statement to the Police and the sworn testimony before I can order the prosecution to produce the statement of the witness made previously to his sworn evidence.”

He returned to the question again in his judgment, where he said:-

“I ruled that 1 would not grant such an application unless the defence counsel establishes that there are some discrepancies between the statement to the police by a prosecution witness and the evidence being given before this court by such a witness.”

The ruling given at the start of the trial requires defending counsel to allege a discrepancy between a statement which he has not seen and the witness’ sworn testimony, and it would be irresponsible conduct, to say the least, to make that allegation in such circumstances.